The Poisoned Pawn Read online

  “I hope you mean it’s the horses that whinny,” Ramirez chuckled.

  Apiro laughed as he struggled to pull the knife from the woman’s chest. He had a staccato laugh that always reminded Ramirez of a night gull. It was impossible for Ramirez to hear the small man cackle without starting to laugh too. The knife popped as it came out. It made the sound of a toilet plunger. It was a large knife, Ramirez noted, the type used by fishermen for gutting fish.

  “Hmmm,” said Apiro. “That was deeply embedded in the rib cage, almost all the way to the spine.”

  “Someone must have been very angry at her.”

  Apiro shook his large head. “I’m not sure. Usually, when that’s the case, we find multiple stab wounds.”

  “I have a feeling she might have been difficult to get along with.”

  “Did you know her?” asked Apiro, surprised.

  Not when she was alive, thought Ramirez. Although I’m certainly getting to know her now. “Well, she has that kind of face, don’t you think?”

  “Now, Ricardo, you must be careful about stereotypes. Some people can appear as sweet as sugar cane and yet be vicious. Like one of those little dogs on the street that wags its tail when you offer it food and then bites you on the hand. Appearances can be deceiving. Ask any of the patients whose noses I’ve shortened or whose breasts I’ve enlarged.”

  Ramirez nodded. If anyone knew how misleading appearances could be, it was Hector Apiro.

  Apiro had been placed in an orphanage at the age of four by parents he believed were ashamed of his deformities. He was old enough then to know he had parents, just not who they were. He was a highly intelligent little boy, often hurt by the bullying of other children. He made up for it by excelling at his studies.

  His misshapenness was the reason Apiro had decided to become a plastic surgeon. He took great pride in making others look more normal, since he could do so little for himself. He enjoyed operating on the dead. Occasionally, he was known to alter their flaws, improving what he referred to as their “final appearance.”

  Ramirez was frequently awed by Apiro’s brilliance. The small doctor had mastered many disciplines besides medicine and chess. He was an avid historian and philosopher, and spoke several languages. Ramirez enjoyed the banter they carried on in the morgue, despite the difficult crimes they investigated together. Or perhaps because of them.

  Apiro stepped down from the stepladder holding the knife delicately in his gloved fingers. He reached for a plastic bottle of Luminol and sprayed the handle with a single sweep. “Hold your breath, Ricardo. I don’t have any face masks at the moment. This substance can be toxic.”

  Apiro placed the knife under an ultraviolet lamp. The handle glowed iridescent blue for a moment.

  “Ah, here we go. See? A small smudge. Luminol is wonderful at picking up blood residue. Perhaps we will be lucky and find DNA from the person who killed her. Even luckier if I have enough supplies to find out.”

  Since October, the American trade embargo had been enforced more rigorously. The United States government wanted to take advantage of Fidel Castro’s failing health. But bullying makes us stubborn, thought Ramirez. It’s like World War II, when Churchill called British citizens to arms by urging them to collect rubber bands. So, too, we Cubans. Except we save everything.

  “Interesting that Canada has an indigenous population,” Apiro said as he clambered back up his stepladder. “That’s impressive. Here, of course, it was quite different.” He shook his large head sadly. “Thousands of Taino villagers welcomed the conquistadores with gifts of tobacco and fish. Imagine their confusion, their disbelief, when they were butchered, their chiefs burned alive. All of this was a violation of international law, of course. The Spaniards were not supposed to conquer any ‘discovered’ people willing to trade with them. But then, as now, the Pope could invent any law he wished. There are only a few traces of the Tainos left, a word here and there, although I find Taino DNA in the blood of mestizos sometimes. Not much to show for what was once a generous and civilized society. It’s another reason I am such a devout atheist. Well, that,” Apiro smiled, “and my Jesuit upbringing.”

  I should check the bodegas, Ramirez thought. Jaba was a Taino word for a bag made of woven palm fronds. Cubans called their shopping bags jabas. Under the Plan Jaba, the elderly were permitted to jump the queue when getting rations. The old woman was the type to push her way to the front of the cola. Someone would have noticed.

  “Why are you an atheist, Hector?” he asked.

  “I’ve always found the Catholic God to be a paradox.” Apiro paused. He turned to look at Ramirez, holding his scalpel thoughtfully. “Vengeful and punitive; turning women into salt for simply looking backwards. And yet seemingly incapable of taking any steps to stop evil. A timely and well-placed bullet in Hitler’s skull would have saved millions. Prayers did nothing. Words are rarely stronger than swords or bullets, however much they may hurt.”

  “I agree with you that some men are so inherently evil that the only reasonable thing to do is to remove them from society,” Ramirez said. “But even Voltaire said if there was no God, it would be necessary to invent one.”

  “And I believe we did,” Apiro grinned. “But then, Voltaire also said that a clever saying proves nothing.”

  Ramirez chuckled. “So what are your thoughts about this woman’s murder, Hector? It seems straightforward this time, no?” The inspector gestured toward the knife, which still rested on the counter. The blue iridescence had disappeared from its handle like magic.

  “Ah, now, Ricardo, one would naturally assume that a fish knife plunged into someone’s heart would cause their death. But look here,” Apiro pointed his gloved finger at the woman’s chest. “There is almost no blood around the wound. Or on her clothing. She was stabbed, yes, but that’s not what killed her.”

  “Then what did?” asked Ramirez, puzzled.

  “I am not sure yet, but I can tell you this. By the time that knife was hammered into her chest, she was already dead.”

  ELEVEN

  “By the way,” said Inspector Ramirez. “I spoke to Señora Jones this morning. Michael Ellis’s wife died last week. She became ill on the flight back to Canada. The Canadian medical authorities think it may have been food poisoning. What do you think?”

  “Hmmm,” said Apiro. He lit his pipe. “The timing is a little suspicious, isn’t it?” He lowered his large head and puffed until the embers in the bowl of his pipe glowed red.

  Ramirez was grateful that the refrigeration unit that stored the bodies in the morgue was working again. It had been out of service for more than a week. The smell of decaying flesh permeated the space. Cigar smoke, like pipe smoke, helped to mask it. The petroleum jelly product they once put under their noses to block the smell of decomposition was no longer available.

  He reached for a cigar in his pocket and cupped his hand around Apiro’s match, drawing deeply until it lit.

  They sat comfortably together in the haze, smoking. Apiro was seated on the second rung of his wooden stepladder. Ramirez sat beside him on a round wooden stool. This arrangement allowed them to discuss matters face-to-face despite the difference in their size. Ramirez often thought these moments in the morgue, even with dead bodies resting in the drawers and on the gurneys, were among his happiest.

  For one thing, there were no distractions—his ghosts always stayed on the other side of the metal doors. And for another, he always felt completely at ease with Apiro, to whom abnormalities were normal, to whom life itself was the anomaly. Maybe Francesca was right. Maybe he was having an affair with Hector Apiro.

  “Well, you know what they say, Ricardo. Once one eliminates the impossible, whatever is left, however unlikely, is usually the truth. Do you know anything about her symptoms?”

  “High blood pressure, deep-pink skin. She fell into a coma on the airplane.”

  “I suppose it could be food poisoning,” said the surgeon. “There have been issues with flight kitchens
before. Insufficient disinfection; food not cooked long enough. Although that is more often associated with rather unpleasant gastrointestinal disorders. But there are some very dangerous chemicals that turn up occasionally in the food chain that can turn skin that colour. Cyanide, for example.” Apiro drew on his pipe. “Do you remember the early 1990s, when tens of thousands of Cubans suddenly went blind? They stumbled around the streets of Havana like something from a horror movie.”

  “I remember it well. I was a young police officer at the time, working foot patrol. It was complete chaos. The houngans claimed they were zombies.”

  Thirty-four thousand Cubans were afflicted. There was near panic in the city until the epidemic passed. Most recovered, although some never regained their sight.

  “I had forgotten all about that, Ricardo,” Apiro chuckled, shaking his head. “The voodoo doctors spout such nonsense. The foreign epidemiologists thought it was a virus. But no tourists became sick, which made that unlikely. Personally, I always suspected cyanide.”

  Ramirez formed a circle with his lips as he exhaled. His smoke ring floated to the stained ceiling and hung below the flickering fluorescent lights. An entire day without a power outage. Water running again. Maybe it would be a Happy New Year after all.

  “Cyanide? What from?”

  “Bootleg rum, probably. I said as much to Castro. He attended all the medical briefings. If our folate levels are normal, most people can handle a little cyanide without serious physical harm. But we’ve been affected by rationing. The fact that tobacco often contains traces of cyanide could well have pushed the victims’ overall exposure to toxic levels. To his credit, Castro assured me he would act.”

  “Those extra beans in our rations were probably your fault, then,” said Ramirez. “I’m not sure if I should thank you. Do you think Señor Ellis could have somehow poisoned his wife’s food before she left Havana?”

  “Perhaps,” Apiro nodded, puffing on his pipe, “but I don’t know how. It’s virtually impossible to obtain that form of cyanide here.”

  Ramirez nodded slowly. “Come to think of it, the sniffing dogs at the airport picked up nothing in his baggage when he arrived here. Would they have detected it?”

  “Of course, if they were trained to,” Apiro said. “Their noses are thousands of times more sensitive than our own. The beagle there is the best of the bunch. A remarkable animal, really. Highly cost-effective. He works for even less than we do.”

  Ramirez laughed. His own salary was a little more than Apiro’s. But the beagle worked for scraps.

  TWELVE

  Celia Jones sat at her desk, buried behind stacks of paper. Theoretically, she was on vacation for another few days; in reality, the holiday was over.

  She had hoped that preparing the tedious paperwork to account for her trip to Cuba would take her mind off little Beatriz’s illness. But itemizing her expenses for the Rideau Regional Police Force’s accounting department was proving torturous.

  There were two official currencies in Cuba. The tourist peso, the CUC, was the one foreigners were required to use. It was illegal for Cubans to have even one in their possession. The CUC was worth fifteen to twenty times as much as the domestic peso, but the rate fluctuated all the time.

  Despite the laws against it, she’d paid for some things in Havana with domestic pesos and others with CUCs. Only the Parque Ciudad Hotel had provided her with receipts. She’d be tied up for months trying to get reimbursed. A Cuban dictatorship had nothing on Ottawa bureaucrats.

  An email from O’Malley pinged in her inbox. “Stop by when you have a moment. Miles.”

  “You are rescuing me from accounting hell,” she typed back, and hit “send.”

  She stood up and stretched. She walked down the hall, said hello to Clare, and poked her head through O’Malley’s open door.

  The police chief sat behind a large desk, chewing on a pencil. He’d quit smoking now that it was illegal in public buildings. He claimed it was a selfish pleasure that never satisfied him anyway.

  “What’s up?”

  “I had the dearly departed’s mother here first thing this morning. Practically frothing at the mouth. She swore at me so much, I thought she might have Tourette’s. She wants us to lay murder charges.” O’Malley leaned back in his chair and folded his big hands behind his neck, grinning. “I was almost in fear for my own life.”

  “Yeah, right.” O’Malley was as big as Paul Bunyan. Good looking, afraid of no one, thought Jones. A guapo, they would say in Cuba. “And just which dearly departed was that?”

  “Hillary Ellis. June Kelly is her mother. She says Michael murdered her daughter. She gave me these.” He pointed to a sheaf of papers. “Apparently they came from his computer. Take a look for yourself.”

  Jones flipped through the pages. A guide to do-it-yourself poisoning. She burst out laughing.

  “Buy a poison-dart frog on the internet and throw it at someone? Collect snake venom? I love this one: make your own ‘posin out of caster beens.’ Personally, I wouldn’t take advice on how to get away with murder from someone who can’t spell. I don’t mean to be rude, but is this woman nuts? She can’t expect you to take this kind of nonsense seriously.”

  “She was quite rabid,” said O’Malley. “She told me she wanted to see Michael fry as she slammed the door behind her. I didn’t have the heart to tell her we don’t have capital punishment anymore. And that we never did have the electric chair.”

  “Is she going to come after you now, if you ignore her allegations?”

  Celia Jones’s job as the police department’s lawyer involved risk management. She was supposed to protect the Rideau Regional Police Force from lawsuits and bad press. And, wherever possible, from crazy old women.

  “I may need to watch my food for a while,” O’Malley said, chuckling. “But seriously, it’s a sad situation. I assured her that we would keep her informed of whatever conclusions the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office reaches. If Ralph Hollands finds anything suspicious, I said we’ll follow up with her then.”

  “I doubt there’s anything to find, Miles. Hillary got sick on a flight. I don’t see how Mike could have had anything to do with it.”

  “I agree. But best if we keep on top of this. Look, Celia, can I leave it up to you to deal with Ralph? He may need help liaising with the Cuban authorities. I don’t think anyone in his office speaks Spanish. Mrs. Kelly is the type to go running to the media. You know what they’re like. They’ll publish just about any juicy allegation, truthful or not. And she’s full of them.”

  “You mean full of it. In other words, you want me to deal with her so that you don’t have to.”

  “You see? There’s that fine legal mind of yours at work.” O’Malley grinned. He looked at his appointment book and scribbled down a number on a pad. He tore off a page and handed it to Jones. “Here. They own a drugstore. She said it’s best to call her there; the home number’s unlisted.”

  “For this, you owe me,” Jones said. “I don’t suppose you have any pull with Accounting, do you?”

  THIRTEEN

  Inspector Ramirez removed his jacket and unbuttoned the collar of his cotton shirt. With the wind finally calm, it was a scorchinghot day. Even the cooler rooms of the beautiful multi-turreted building that served as police headquarters were hot and humid behind the thick stone walls.

  A green gecko hung upside down by the cracked window, breathing lightly. Ramirez ignored the small intruder and sat behind his desk.

  The Minister of the Interior had instructed Ramirez to deduct the cost of his airfare from the Major Crime Unit’s already meagre annual budget. Ramirez would need to complete a mountain of documents to explain the reason he was transferring funds out of the country or risk being investigated by Cuban Intelligence for fraud.

  That would be embarrassing, Ramirez thought. I would have to bribe them to drop the investigation. That’s when stealing money from the exhibit room would be a necessity.

  A tall Afro-Cub
an man knocked on Ramirez’s open door. “Inspector Ramirez? Do you have a moment?”

  The man wore a light coloured shirt and a black suit that had seen better days. It was stained with ingrained dirt on the pant legs and jacket cuffs. But Ramirez could hardly criticize him for that. All Cubans had problems keeping their good clothes clean, with dry cleaners few and far between and the continual shortage of laundry soap. Some used diesel, which worked well but smelled, and there was always the danger of exploding into flames if someone nearby lit up a cigar. Dressing well was a risky business.

  “Yes?” Ramirez looked behind the stranger. He had no police escort, which meant he had to be a plainclothes policeman from another division.

  “My name is Juan Tranquilino Latapier. I have been sent here from El Gabriel,” the man confirmed. “I understand you are investigating the death of an old woman who was stabbed with a fish knife?”

  “News travels fast,” said Ramirez. “Yes, the body was found early yesterday.” He was surprised a detective from a small village outside Havana had heard of the murder.

  The tall man smiled, revealing perfect white teeth. “I have a similar file, although mine involves two children. Both were stabbed to death, but in one case the knife was left behind in the body. I understand that was the same with your victim. I am only in Havana for a few hours, but I thought perhaps we could assist each other. Share information.”

  “Of course, Juan. Please, sit down. Tell me more about your investigation.”

  Latapier sat across from the inspector on one of the two badly worn upholstered chairs. “The two children were murdered about a year ago. The first was a little girl named Zoila. You may have heard of this. It caused quite a stir locally.”

  “Zoila?” Ramirez cast his mind back. The name was vaguely familiar. “I think I read about it, probably in a police report.”